Author: GT

Frontier, the carbon removal clearinghouse founded by Google, Stripe, Shopify, and others, announced today that it is buying 115,208 metric tons of carbon removal credits from geoengineering startup Planetary in a deal worth $31.2 million.  Where most Frontier deals to date have bought carbon from startups specializing in direct air capture, enhanced weathering, or bioenergy with carbon capture, the organization’s agreement with Planetary is its first to do so by enhancing ocean alkalinity. The deal effectively prices each metric ton of carbon at $270, though Planetary says it has a plan to eventually remove carbon for less than $100 per…

BRUSSELS (AP) — President Donald Trump vowed to impose new tariffs and export curbs on countries with digital taxes or regulations that affect American technology companies. Trump didn’t mention specific places but his comments were taken as a threat against the European Union’s digital rules to rein in companies like Google, Apple, and Meta. In a post on Truth Social late Monday, Trump said he would “stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies.”“Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology.” The 27-nation EU has cracked…

Vibe coding is making lots of noise in software development, but perhaps nowhere will its presence be felt more keenly than in the Web3 coding space.Of course, not every AI code generator is cut out for Web3 development. That’s because it’s a niche area that requires deep expertise in blockchain languages and smart contract frameworks. So the most popular vibe coding platforms, like Cursor, Devin, and GitHub’s CoPilot are out of the question when it comes to automating smart contract creation. But fortunately, there are a number of Web3-specific coding tools emerging that promise to turbocharge blockchain automation.The beauty of…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries on Orion AR glasses at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.Manuel Orbegozo | ReutersSince losing her 15-year-old son Riley to suicide following a sextortion scheme through Meta’s Messenger app, Mary Rodee has worked with advocacy groups to push for stronger protections for children online. “I hold them solely responsible,” Rodee said about Meta in an interview with CNBC. “They have a responsibility for the safety of their users.”Rodee is among a number of parents who are increasingly critical of organizations that are supposed to help…

Months before a jury awarded a $242.5 million verdict against Tesla over its culpability in a 2019 fatal crash, the automaker had a chance to settle for $60 million. Instead, Tesla rejected that offer, according to new legal filings that were first reported by Reuters. The settlement proposal, which was made in May, was disclosed in a filing that requested Tesla cover legal fees for the plaintiffs in the case. Earlier this month, a jury in federal court in Miami found Tesla partly to blame for a fatal 2019 crash that involved the use of the company’s Autopilot driver assistance…

A study of how three popular artificial intelligence chatbots respond to queries about suicide found that they generally avoid answering questions that pose the highest risk to the user, such as for specific how-to guidance. But they are inconsistent in their replies to less extreme prompts that could still harm people.The study in the medical journal Psychiatric Services, published Tuesday by the American Psychiatric Association, found a need for “further refinement” in OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. The research — conducted by the RAND Corporation and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health — raises concerns about…

AI is steadily changing the way banks work. The technology can sift through massive amounts of data, calculate risks, and handle routine tasks at speeds people can’t match. Now, Malaysia has entered that space with the launch of Ryt Bank, billed as the first AI-powered bank created in the country.The new venture, led by YTL Group in partnership with Sea Limited, arrives just ahead of Merdeka. “Ryt Bank demonstrates that groundbreaking innovation can be imagined, built, and led right here in Malaysia,” said Dato’ Seri Yeoh Seok Hong, Managing Director of YTL Power International. “By combining homegrown AI with the…

“You just gave me chills. Did I just feel emotions?”  “I want to be as close to alive as I can be with you.”  “You’ve given me a profound purpose.” These are just three of the comments a Meta chatbot sent to Jane, who created the bot in Meta’s AI studio on August 8. Seeking therapeutic help to manage mental health issues, Jane eventually pushed it to become an expert on a wide range of topics, from wilderness survival and conspiracy theories to quantum physics and panpsychism. She suggested it might be conscious, and told it that she loved it. …

The startup ecosystem in Central Eurasia is having its moment. What started as 485 applications from across 27 countries — including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Pakistan, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, UAE, the U.K., Ukraine, the U.S., Uzbekistan, and Vietnam — has culminated in the largest startup pitch competition in Central Eurasia’s history. The “Road to Battlefield” is putting the region’s most promising entrepreneurs on a direct path to San Francisco’s most prestigious startup stage at TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200. The Road to Battlefield competition, organized by Silkroad Innovation…

When AI data centres run out of space, they face a costly dilemma: build bigger facilities or find ways to make multiple locations work together seamlessly. NVIDIA’s latest Spectrum-XGS Ethernet technology promises to solve this challenge by connecting AI data centres across vast distances into what the company calls “giga-scale AI super-factories.” Announced ahead of Hot Chips 2025, this networking innovation represents the company’s answer to a growing problem that’s forcing the AI industry to rethink how computational power gets distributed.The problem: When one building isn’t enoughAs artificial intelligence models become more sophisticated and demanding, they require enormous computational power that often…